


A Tap On The Shoulder

by asdfgjkl



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:30:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1710050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asdfgjkl/pseuds/asdfgjkl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you want to go on an adventure?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he said as he stared into the quiet mystery of Armin’s eyes and almost forgot the second part of his sentence, which came tumbling out of his mouth like a hasty assurance, “I do.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tap On The Shoulder

There was a tap on his shoulder, and then, “Do you want to go on an adventure?”

Eren turned, surprised and a little angry to have been caught unguarded, to find Armin staring back at him – the angel clothed in boy skin, draped with a halo of brilliant golden hair, piercing him with intelligent blue eyes, Armin.

This was how they met; with the promise of adventure lingering on the tips of Armin’s extended hand.

Eren was 22 – young, fresh out of college, looking for a start. Later on, when he was older and wiser and the wanderlust of youth was out of his system, he would wonder who Armin really was and why he disappeared as quickly as he came. But, for now, he was content to tell himself that this golden boy who popped out of nowhere was _meant_ for him. Armin was God-sent.

“Yeah,” he said as he stared into the quiet mystery of Armin’s eyes and almost forgot the second part of his sentence, which came tumbling out of his mouth like a hasty assurance, “I do.”

**

Armin was driving and Eren was riding shotgun, waiting for the part when Mikasa would shake him awake from his dream. It didn’t come.

Was this not a dream?

“Where are we going?” Eren asked.

“You’ll see.”

They were on a lost trail with only the guidance of the setting sun, dawning upon their horizon. There was a breeze trickling past their cheeks, there was them breezing through a twilit road, and there was music in the background. Eren recognized the song as one that he used to love, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what it was called.

“Dust to Dust,” Armin said.

“Oh, yeah.” A pause. “You listen to _The Civil Wars_?”

Armin had the strangest, lopsided smile teasing his lips. “No, not normally. But you told me this song was good, so I tried listening to it.”

Eren hummed, “Did I?”

He saw Armin nod an affirmation from the corner of his eyes, and it was that, more than anything, that caused his next sentence to slip out of him, “You shouldn’t be driving.”

The smile was gone, but amusement was still apparent in Armin’s countenance, “Why not?”

Eren considered it for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said at last, shrugging. “You just- shouldn’t.”

Armin laughed, “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. I’m a good driver.”

At that instant, Eren thought two things: one, it was funny how a stranger’s laughter sounded as dusty as the song did. Two, Armin was lying.

**

They ended up in a cabin, deeper into the wilderness. When Eren brought up the matter of clothing and food, Armin waved it aside and told him everything would be alright.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “You just go sleep.”

Eren believed him. Not blindly, of course, but because there was a pile of freshly-laundered clothes on the bed when Eren walked into the wooden house. He approached the bed – the only one in the room, he noticed – and picked up the shirt at the top of the stack. It smelled of Armin.

Without changing, or doing anything other than taking off his shoes, Eren climbed into the bed, holed himself under the thick warmth of the duvet, and stared upwards, where a window was built into the sloping ceiling. The stars were mesmerizing.

A moment later, he heard the door open and turned to see the blonde entering. Armin smiled when he caught Eren’s eyes, but Eren did not respond, only kept staring. He decided that he liked the presence of happiness on Armin’s face – it was the perfect, finishing stroke Da Vinci needed to impart on Mona Lisa.

“What’s wrong?” Armin asked.

Eren shook his head, and decided, selfishly, that he also liked seeing concern – for him – in Armin’s eyes.

They didn’t do much sleeping that night. At first, the both of them were silent. Eren was stargazing and Armin, he thought, was probably doing the same. It felt oddly comfortable to sleep with the blonde; something Eren had quickly came to terms with.

Then, Armin pulled out a book and sat up, an elbow supporting him, and started to read. Something about the gesture - the strangely familiar pose, the way his sunlit bangs cascaded at an angle over his face - made Eren want to cup this memory preciously, in his hands.

Eren soon realized Armin was reading a poem. He knew virtually nothing about poetry, so if there was anything he should discover tonight, it should’ve been something along the lines of a newfound love for words grouped into verses.

Instead, he discovered that Armin’s voice transfixed him even more than the stars.

**

“ _and only when I_

 

_began to think of losing you did I_

_recognize you when you were already_

 

_part memory part distance remaining_

_mine in the ways that I learn to miss you_

 

_from what we cannot hold the stars are made_ ”

**

That night, Eren had a nightmare.

He wasn’t entirely sure what it was about. There was black and red and wispy golden threads and shy shy blue and there was noise, lots of noise, there was buzzing, there was chanting, _this is not real this is not real this is not real_ , there was Mikasa, there was shouting, screaming, and he was in Armin’s arms before his eyes were open, his eyelids were glued together by tears, he heard words like a homogeneous mixture of noises, he heard words but he didn’t know what they meant, he shook, he thought of the stars from last night and somehow that made him cry even harder.

He thought of Armin and the scent invading his nose smelling of home, and his eyes shot open, bloody and streaked with crimson, and Armin repeated what he had been saying for the past ten minutes, “I’m here. I’m not leaving you again.”

Eren finally heard it.

**

They went about the day doing absolutely nothing. Armin read to Eren some more before he got up and made them breakfast. Eren milled about and after a quick tour around the tiny cabin, in which Armin was suspiciously missing, he sighed and went out for fresh air.

Who would’ve thought that he would bump into Mikasa.

She hugged him at first sight and let out a sound that Eren would consider a whimper had it not come from Mikasa, because Mikasa didn’t whimper.

“Come back,” she pleaded. “Come back to me.”

It was only later, after he disentangled himself from her and went back into the cabin without a word, that he realized it _was_ a whimper, because Mikasa was crying, and her tears left wet spots on his shirt, so it made sense for her to whimper.

**

“Hey,” Eren greeted as the door opened to reveal a rather disheveled Armin. “Where’d you go?”

“I was out gathering supplies,” he lifted two plastic bags for Eren to see. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing much. I met Mikasa, though.”

“Oh?” That caught Armin’s interest. “Did she say anything?”

“Uh-huh. She, she said,” Eren paused. He frowned, finding it strange that he couldn’t recall what Mikasa said even though he was sure it had only been a few hours.

“She said?” Armin prompted.

His frown deepened, “I don’t know. I forgot.”

Without another word, Armin dropped the bags he was holding and half-ran to Eren, enveloping him in a crushing hug.

**

Eren fell asleep early that night, before Armin even received the chance to weave a lullaby out of his exotic stories. He dreamt again – he didn’t know when dreams had started becoming a daily occurrence – but this time it wasn’t a nightmare, and he remembered very clearly what it was about: Mikasa.

His sister was waking him up, but he knew he was only woken up inside his dream, the way one sometimes was when one had a dream in a dream. There was relief painted all over her face, and if Armin’s smile was a light brush then Mikasa’s relief was a whole tub of paint poured onto the canvas.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Eren asked groggily.

"Well..." she trailed off, but didn't continue.

Eren was happy to leave it at that.

“Do you remember what day it is today?” Mikasa called out as she turned on her heels to leave Eren’s room.

“No?”

She stopped short, “It’s Armin’s birthday.”

Her voice was soft as she said it.

“Shit! I didn’t prepare a present.”

She laughed – it was refreshing, like the taste of cold lemon juice down his throat.

“It’s okay, just don’t forget to wear black.”

There was silence before Eren answered, “Black?”

Then, he woke up.

**

Eren wasn’t sure when Armin had crawled into bed with him, but it was his sleeping face that Eren woke to, his arms curled around Eren’s waist that he felt, and his mouth hanging open, allowing a pool of drool to gather on the pillow.

Eren was overwhelmed by a strong need to kiss him awake, kiss his lips close, kiss him asleep, but he shouldn’t want that, should he? After all, they barely knew each other, and even the thought of sleeping with Armin should’ve been disquieting.

But it wasn’t.

And before he knew it, Armin was stirring and his eyes were slowly stringing open and he muttered a croaky _morning_ before Eren’s choice was taken from him and there were lips on his lips and it was the most natural thing in the world to lean into the kiss and delve even deeper.

“Happy birthday,” Eren said, once they broke apart.

“You remembered,” Armin replied sheepishly.

“Mikasa reminded me.”

“I should’ve known.”

Eren rolled his eyes and nuzzled closer into Armin. He felt the grip on his waist tightening, and he never wanted to wake up again.

**

It was nighttime, and their limbs were a haphazard, crisscrossing mess beneath the blanket.

For some reason, it was extremely quiet. Usually, Armin would be reading, or the two of them would be talking, but only silence filled the blank spaces tonight. Eren looked over at Armin, worry pasted on his face. The blonde’s eyes were lifeless, and in them was a dullness Eren was not used to seeing.

“Armin,” Eren whispered, his voice like a spell or a curse, carried by the tides of the night. “Read to me?”

Armin closed his eyes, bit his lips, and opened his eyes. He pulled out the book from where he kept it under the bed, and flipped it open to where they left off last night. He started reading.

**

“ _I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;_

_I lift my lids and all is born again._

_(I think I made you up inside my head.)”_

**

“I think you should go back,” Armin said later, into the stillness of the room, when he had placed the book back where it belonged and Eren was drifting between the realms of dream and reality.

“Back?” Eren asked sleepily, stifling a yawn. “Where?”

“Home.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mikasa needs you, she needs you more than I do.”

“What? No, no, she-”

“She does!” Armin cried. “You’re all she has left, now.”

“But what if I need you? What if I need the way you read to me? What if I need you beside me when I sleep and when I wake up? What if _I_ need _you_ , Armin? Have you ever considered that before you left, you selfish jerk?”

Armin said nothing.

It took a bit longer than usual for the darkness to lull Eren to wake.

**

“Eren,” was the first thing he heard when he woke up. Heavy disappointment settled in his guts when he was alert enough to discern the voice as Mikasa's. “You woke up just in time.”

Eren was about to ask, _for what_ , when the conversation he had with Mikasa this morning sprung to mind. _Armin’s birthday._

“I’m not going.”

Mikasa opened her mouth to say something, but words eluded her. They always did, when she needed them the most. She never had to worry about that before, because Armin was the one who had a way with words, Armin was enough to speak for all three of them – himself, Eren and herself.

But now…

At last, she settled for, “He would’ve wanted you to go.”

“Don’t act like you know him better than me.”

That stung. Mikasa took in a shaky breath, and let out an equally shaky breath. That stung.

Sure, she might not have known what Armin tasted like. Yes, she didn’t know how it felt to thread her fingers through his hair. True, her world wasn’t illuminated by Armin’s smiles. But, she had also been friends with Armin for as long as Eren had. She had always stood by Armin’s side, just like he had always stood by hers’. She had considered him a friend, someone important enough to affect her emotionally.

Maybe she didn’t feel as heartbroken as Eren did, but whoever said pain was relative?

Mikasa closed the door behind her as she walked out of Eren’s room.

**

The sun was still asleep when Eren woke to Armin, and somehow he knew, even through the dark, even without seeing the look on Armin’s face, that this would be their last meeting.

Eren choked back a sob, and instead meshed his lips against Armin’s like his guts had been screaming for him to do. Armin closed his eyes, understanding that this was words failing him, like it failed Mikasa. This vicious kiss, this struggle for breath and unmasked urgency, it translated to _goodbye_.

Sparks did not fly across the room; Eren’s fingers did not tingle with electricity against Armin’s bare back. Nothing extraordinary happened for them – not even when Eren slicked his fingers and inserted two digits slowly, with all the gentleness he could muster, into Armin, and curled them just _right_ , touched him just _right_ ; or even when Eren pushed into Armin, the frown on his face both a sign of concentration and heartbreak, the too-tight grip of his fingers on Armin’s hips sure to bruise come tomorrow, if tomorrow came for them.

That night, the only sound in the room was wet, squelching, and wet, crying.

**

“ _Nature’s first green is gold,_

_Her hardest hue to hold._

_Her early leaf’s a flower;_

_But only so an hour._

_Then leaf subsides to leaf._

_So Eden sank to grief,_

_So dawn goes down to day._

 

_Nothing gold can stay.”_

** 

There was a tap on his shoulder, and then, “Do you want to go on an adventure?”

Eren turned, surprised and a little angry to have been caught unguarded, to find Armin staring back at him – the angel clothed in boy skin, draped with a halo of brilliant golden hair, piercing him with intelligent blue eyes, Armin.

This was how Eren remembered him; perfect. 

“Yeah,” he said as he stared into the swirls of blue that would never fail to captivate him, and he thought of how Armin was like a puzzle whose pieces had fallen effortlessly into place. 

He didn’t forget the second part of his sentence, “I do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Derived from a twisted version of this prompt: _You’re leaving your favorite restaurant after eating breakfast when a stranger taps you on the shoulder. But this tap leads to a conversation—and adventure—that leaves you with one item that you never thought you’d ever own._
> 
> Thanks for reading! I started out writing this without a clear plot in mind. If it was confusing, well, that would be because I was just as confused writing this as you were, reading it, lol. Feedback is appreciated <3


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